What's Left of the Flag
by phantomwriter05
Summary: 20 years after the defeat of Valentine Morgenstern, and three since the bloody end of the Fae Civil War, The war weary and divided Shadow World is rock by the disappearance of a famed Alicante Debutante that lands Magnus Bane in a cell. Desperate to free her father, Tessa Lightwood, turns to an old love for help at Garroway and Fray Consulting Detectives. Sizzy, Clace, Malec.


_**On the mid-summer's eve in the bleak year of the snake, the Seelie Queen was felled by poison. In her death she left one heir. A little girl whose father's name she took to her grave. Afraid of landing in the clutches of the fearful and paranoid Clave in light of the whispers of her platinum blond locks, she was hidden away. In her place, the Clave elected a puppet successor that would adhere to the council in Idris's will.** _

**_He was a cruel Tyrant named Sioracanna. Born to a mermaid princess and demon father, his egg fertilized after his mother was devoured by the father. The Water sprite was born with a cruel disposition, a hatred for those like himself, and a slimed shark face. But despite his checkered past, the warlord's staunch support of the Clave in the shadow war earned him the Seelie throne. In the subsequent years of his rule, he viciously stamped out his rivals and increasingly devolved with the Clave in tolerance for mixed blood individuals, the yoke of Jonathan Morgenstern hanging like a dark cloud forever over the new peace._**

**_At the fever pitch of the paranoia and intolerance the Seelie heir appeared like a light in stormy political climate. Demanded to surrender and come to Alicante for trial without a crime, the heir raised her banner in defiance. While fellow half-breeds, Warlocks, werewolf packs, and exiled Shadow Hunters flocked to her growing army. The Clave voted neutrality while the Fae Civil War began. _**

**_Both Shadow and Mundane world felt the fires of the three years of blood soaked hell. Each side carried with them both war heroes and criminals, while neither knew sacred ground from their battlefields and guerrilla warfare. Amidst the outcry for order and safety from the chaos and killing, the clave voted to intervene on the side of Sioracanna. _**

**_In the final year of the war the fighting had become so ferocious that more Shadow Hunters were killed in battle than in the previous 200 years. While the Institutes in New York, Los Angeles, and London were sacked and burned to the ground never to be rebuilt again. _**

**_Outnumbered and outgunned, the Seelie Court fell and the rebellion quelled violently. To ensure the safety of what was left of her soldiers a new peace was finally reached when the Seelie heir accepted a forced marriage alliance in agreement to a pardon for her men and new laws implemented for broader rights for all._**

**_But scars and hatred run deep for those who fought on the battlefields. So while peace may smile yet on the shadow world once again, for those whose families were killed by rebel and "Johnny Clave" alike. _**

**_The war would never be over._**

* * *

**Prologue – Drunken Lullabies**

_New York City_

_2036_

The harvest moon hung low over an undercurrent of a passing sheen of wispy clouds, creating a framed layer above the old buildings, dusty and withered with time and neglect. In the distance the glass and crystal of a new age seemed to mock the old world that looked up to it. No one remembered that people lived here, certainly not those who had built the future in sight of the forgotten. The modern towers and tall skyscrapers of dreams erupted into the skyline, resembling the glinting fangs of a great beast capturing the ruins of "Old New York" in its jaws. Some would say that it was like a monster savoring the meal before swallowing the last remains of them whole. But for every two of those who saw themselves as a victim to progress, one knew the truth. The new Manhattan skyline wasn't a ravenous beast, it was a large whale, and these forgotten districts were the kelp that ate away the grime and leftovers cast away in the large mammals wake. Never known, never seen, but they performed their duty like clockwork, and in return they were left to their devices.

They had renamed this district, however briefly, many years ago. Chelsea sounded a lot more appealing to the right kind of customer— a customer with a full wallet and pension to travel with similarly equipped individuals— rather than catering to the downtrodden and lower class which had a different name for this part of town. The fat men in their suits with their real estate schemes, and the old society crows in their pearls and self-righteousness, began by cleaning out the liquor stores, sex shows, and porn theaters. Then, they exiled the slum and one room apartment occupants— drunks, addicts, welfare families— saddling them with a one way out to the bridge and tunnel. But these politicians and smooth talking progressives had only cleaned the surface of a rot that came from deep within. In their tearing and clearing for a better tax bracket, they awoke what the old neighborhoods had always known was asleep underneath. In the news they claimed construction accidents. While others came up with logical, if not farfetched, stories to match the strange mutilations, maulings by giant rats, alligators in the sewers. But if they'd only known; the truth of what hid in the old buildings was far more frightening and preposterous. If only these money grubbers with their organic food markets and new age coffee houses knew this territory had been marked long before realtors tried to cater to The Hamptons crowd. These renovations lasted all but a decade before the land was deemed "not worth the risk" as they said. But in their wake they left the rebar and half-finished towers of a future that never was, mixed with the condemned and half knocked down buildings of what used to be.

If you ask about Chelsea around here, they'd send you to Chelsea D., the piano player that goes Underground Thursdays and Saturdays, who lived uptown. Or Chelsea X., the Nixie that worked in sheets just above him. She's nameless, but you'll never forget the body that could make you ever wonder why you needed your spouse … for a price.

If you were wondering what was Underground, that would be down the old subway maintenance stairs just in front of the old Monarch Theater. You follow them down and down till you can't even hear the rattle of the new automated metro bullets rippling through the new tunnels. Once you're surrounded by dead silence, it'll be to the left, through an old restricted security door in the sewer tunnel. There you'll push back the blanket covering up a great tragedy. A graveyard of decrepit trains from ages past, bent and twisted atop a junction of rusted rails enclosed by rubble an subterranean shops. Its surroundings dark and foreboding, occupied by an abyss of neglect and Victorian clothed skeletons behind brittle and broken windows adorned with endorsements of James Garfield and anti-suffrage rhetoric. Keeping watch over the lost world was a dual-faced clock that stopped running half past four, around the time the train wreck killed everyone in the area. The mismanagement of the city officials and railroad commission buried with the shovel of progress and the sod of over a century.

There's no sign to mark the tavern, no advertisements to call attention to the small gin joint. If you can find it, then you can taste the worst alcohol in the world, served by the surliest and ugliest of bartenders. All you have to do is follow your eyes to the best place to hide a body or, if you're blind, wiff the rank smell of cheap wolf's bane tobacco. It's a dirty place, full of hard luck cases, and even harder faces with collections of eyes that you couldn't always count on one hand. The place doesn't have a name because no one really owns it, and no one really cares too. It the same old crowd night after night, day after day, not on a map, but always crowded. They're not the average barflies someone might find above. But they're average in the places where a glamour is optional, and not required.

In the corner of the place an old piano is tuned. Sometimes the four armed maestro plays something current, sometimes an old piece when someone is feeling nostalgic for something from the 50's—as in 1850's— and has the commission money to buy back the memory. But when Chelsea D. isn't there, it's always the blues: Charles, Ray-Vaughn, the good stuff. There's always chatter just over the music, a mixture of stories of old adventures and inside jokes thrown at each other thousands and thousands of times over in the decades, maybe even centuries. They always start with tidbits of news and rumors in the shadow world that somehow always related back to those old tales. Some may find it annoying but when you have lived as long as some of them have, it was elementary that all history always came back to those old stories, one big loop.

Today it was of Lenore, the vampire mistress of Baltimore, and her release from the Bone City that morning. The old werewolves could lie and say they weren't disappointed to hear it, but even in what's supposed to be a better more equal society for all Downworlders and Nephilim, there was still an anti-establishment mentality when the Clave was one upped.

There had been many tales over the years of the mistress of sorrow and beauty. She was a golden haired gem, gentle and unassuming in death as she was in life. Some had claimed that she had been the queenliest of the undead, the purest of the damned. Her tale made famous by a dead, broken-hearted mundane poet who had loved her as much in life as in her death. However, when a Wall Street broker is found dead without a drop of blood to his name and her lipstick on his collar, it was hard not to be the only suspect, even if your poem is recited yearly by thousands of high school students. Despite the open and shut case, as decided by the Inquisitor, the council of the undead demanded that she be put on trial.

"Them leaches, hired a Detective I heard."

"No, I think it was that Lightwood inquisitor who hired the Detective to cement their case."

"Oh right, the almighty Clave would lower itself to hire a Detective, when they have so many 'Cleaner, more traditional' ways of going after us downworlders."

"They play politics these days, the way I hear it … like them Mundy governments."

"That's right. The Clave's changed boys, and now all they do these days is bitch and moan at each other."

"Sounds like you old ladies."

"HAHHAHHAHA"

"Blow it out your ass, keep! All I know is that someone got them a Detective."

"The vamps …."

No one had seen him come in, and no one knew where he came from. He was a young man who kept to himself most of the time, only conversing when he needed a drink for himself or the Nixie. He wasn't a regular, but he was familiar enough that no one ever said a thing when he appeared sporadically.

Most of the patrons turned to peer at the youth leaning over his drink at the edge of the bar. Their caution was momentary. He had the look of a shadow hunter in his face— handsome with sharp blue green eyes, portraying a longing sadness and world weary soul deep from within. But his coloring was trademark werewolf: dark facial hair and jet black curls, marked with an abnormal streak of white. But he didn't smell or look like a werewolf, nor a child of the Nephilim. He was, as far as anyone could believe, an ordinary run of the mill college-aged mundane. He wore old jeans, silver colored Henley under a wrinkled dark blue button down. Over all of it was a well-worn, threadbare field trench coat stitched out of tough cotton material that was black as night.

He didn't look at anyone as he spoke. "Turned out that the old man's blood had been drained by embalming pumps. The killer used ice picks and jammed them in his neck … Clave declared a mistrial, and the warlock who did it is still out there." The young man continued, taking a swig of his drink, eyes burning at the mention of the child of Lilith with the ghost of a dark, adversarial history haunting his memories.

"Warlock you say?" a grumpy old werewolf asked. He had long, gray, matted mutton chops that were braided and hard leathery skin.

"What would a warlock want with a mundane banker?" A vampire with a lacy, collared choker demanded. The teenage queen looked to be just finishing her sophomore year of high school, but was maybe the oldest patron out of them all.

The young mundane tapped his glass down on the scratched bar. "Blood from a man born from the womb of the damned is a powerful catalyst for black magic." He answered. His blue green eyes shadowed darkly in the glow of the gas lamps. "It's why it's illegal for you to breed with humans." He sounded sure of himself.

The old werewolf shook his head, disbelieving at what he was hearing. "But, her lipstick was on the old man's collar." He said with vitriol, earning a glare from his drinking companion. No matter the company and what could be said for equality, the old dislike was fermented in the depths of history and hatred like a bitter wine.

"A mother has the right to kiss her child one last time." The youth was filled with sorrow and remorse, something longing if not haunted in his eyes.

A legless Fae Knight with green skin and clothing made from leaves frowned. "How do you know about that stuff with the blood?" He asked suspiciously.

"When you own a bookstore there's a lot of things you pick up along the way." The youth grunted, taking another swig.

The patrons shared a round of looks at one another, the old werewolf nodded approvingly, puffing on his pipe, while the fairy knight shrugged. Slowly the chatter restarted, conjecturing and snickering about the one time old "Lock Jaw" had a three way with two of the vampire girls in the laundry room of the Dumort.

The door to the bar flew open moments later and a tall, muscular silhouette stood sternly, looking on the scene. His features were shadowed by lantern light spilling out into the subterranean tomb surrounding the setting. When he stalked into the bar, his thick soled boots thumped obnoxiously on the dusty wooden floor, shaking tables with each heavy step. All eyes fell on him, everyone but the youth at the end of the bar.

The newcomer was tall and broad. A vest of tough padded leather strained to cover his wide, milk-white chest covered in inky black runes that he wore as proud and honorably as war medals. His thick tree trunk sized legs were covered by padded leather trousers, soft and flexible as he lumbered onward. His big hands were covered in matching fingerless gauntlets. A silver grooved Kenjal was strapped to his forearm. On each hip sat a metal fire and wind wheel both sharpened so expertly they could be used to shave a rat's hine-side. Rounding it out was a repeating crossbow across his back. From the moment he walked in his dark blue eyes were transfixed to the end of the bar, getting a good look at the young man. He pushed his messy golden hair out of his face.

"What'll it be shadow hunter?" The bartender asked. His frown was as unfriendly as his demeanor. The handsome Nephlim wasn't ignorant to the fact that he wasn't welcome to the establishment. But rather than becoming weary of his surroundings, he seemed to enjoy the animosity thrown his way. There was an arrogance that many young shadow hunters seemed to have inherited over the years. They carried an untouchable sense of immunity to consequence of their action. A peace hard won by the blood and sweat of their parents against Valentine Morgenstern, bred into entitlement by their children.

The ease of his blue eyes hid in them a fire of trouble that anyone could see from the moment he walked in. "What're you drinking over there?" The blond shadow hunter called out to his peer at the end of the bar. The young man with the streak of white ignored him.

"Ragnal fire tea." The bartender was already pouring it for the man, as he answered for the mundane. The quicker the shadow hunter drank his drink and left, the better it was for everyone. The frothing drink spilled as the bartender dropped it unceremoniously with a loud clack. Like a juicy steak, the Nephilim ate up the ill intent, savoring the unwelcome of the barroom filled with Downworlders. He sucked the spilled liquid off his fingers before taking deep gulps of the strong alcohol. He made a show of the spectacle, making an obnoxious sigh when he was done.

"What do you cut this with, Fabio?" He asked the brutish, ugly bartender.

"Piss …" The old man sneered walking away from the killer with an angel's face. The shadow hunter laughed with a fake mirth as he twisted his stool to face the rest of the occupants, his elbows resting against the old mahogany. Despite everyone going about business as usual, they knew that those blue eyes were waiting to make their move.

Finally the amputated Fae broke the awkward silence. "Going for a stroll?" His Irish brogue had a shaky quality hidden in the indifference he tried to throw up.

The shadow hunter looked down at his weapons and smirked darkly. "Just looking around, maybe find me a vampire." He made sure that everyone could hear, turning his eyes down to the end of the bar.

"Why? The Clave cleared her." The dark haired deathly pale teen in the form fitting black satin dress protested loudly. She was silenced by the old werewolf with a withered hand to her bare shoulder.

The man just smiled devilishly, lifting his glass in front of him, staring at the rosy mist in his drink. "Yeah, I heard … you blood suckers got yourself a mercenary." He tossed another look down to the mundane.

"A Detective." The undead beauty spoke up again, correcting him with a snap.

He leveled the vampire girl with a glare. In his eyes was a deep seated anger that went down to his soul, mixed with a poisonous black hatred. But his response was to snort dismissively at her.

"Detective?" he asked, rotating the drink in his hand. "Is that what he calls himself these days?" He sneered.

"You know the guy?" The old werewolf asked through puffs of his pipe.

The shadow hunter's pearly teeth glinted in the gaslight as he smiled wickedly. He leaned back against the bar with a comfortable ease. "Half-breed cur from what I hear." He said loudly. "Turned his back on his own family when he turned tail and ran from the glass city after killing Robert Lightwood. He's a dyed-in-the-wool outlaw. Rebel scum, who killed a bunch of the Seelie King's knights, and probably even more shadow hunters during the Fae Wars … now making a living scraping the barrel like a bottom feeder." He tossed down the way to the end of the bar. Everyone turned to the young man whose eyes narrowed.

The mundane finally spoke. "What's the matter?" the human mocked. "Disappointed because there's one less innocent Downworlder to torture? Or you got the IQ test back and still have to take the classes with the popup books and nap time?" He toasted the shadow hunter before downing the rest of his drink. "Don't worry Carstairs … You'll always be mommy's special boy." He grunted in reassurance dipped in disinterest when he was finished.

The shadow hunter's easy façade of arrogance slowly melted away. He also finished his drink, before slipping off his stool, making his way toward the mundane. The bar shook with every deliberate stomp. "Speaking of mommies…" He announced to everyone. "I don't know what's more disgusting, that Fairchild was so desperate she lowered herself to take it from an overgrown dog like a bitch in heat, or the fact that the mutt they pulled out of her still looks human." He was halfway to the man, when he stopped. "How do you think mommy liked it?" He pushed, watching the mundane's jaw tighten. "I guess being married to your dad, she'd have to get used to doggy style, wouldn't she?" He spit out like venom.

The youth didn't exactly respond the way Carstairs had expected. The mundane grunted in amusement, a crooked smirk just appearing on his face. He shook his head. "Well … I don't crap where I eat, but If you're looking for a fight ... I wouldn't." He pushed back his coat to reveal a holstered .44 Colt revolver, a survivor of over a century. Its costumed, antique body was refitted with polished chrome marked with scars and superficial fractures, a veteran of many of battle. On the handle of black leather was an old, almost faded, craftsmen rune of the Branwell family.

When the man saw the old Victorian steam punk weapon, he began to laugh. He knew as did everyone, that runes affected gun powder. "Come on, Detective!" he prodded with a tap of his finger to the rune of Angelic Power square in the middle of chest. "Don't make it too easy, you slimy half-breed mutt!" he snarled.

When the young man's blue green eyes found the shadow hunter they weren't full of fear or mischief. He had the eyes of a soldier, of a man who had seen too much in his short life. The insults thrown at him and his mother went inside him, freezing into a deep cold in his chest.

"About as easy as it was jamming a Seraph blade through your mother?" he asked dangerously. There was a sudden still silence that overwhelmed the bar as the root of the confrontation was finally spoken aloud.

It hadn't been that Emma Carstairs, the fiercest shadow hunter since Jace Herondale, had been killed by a teenage rebel during the Claves intervention in the Fae Civil War. It wasn't that the rebel soldier had impaled her mid-battle while wielding his mother's old Seraph Blade, the almighty symbol of all Emma fought for. Nor that her killer was nothing more than a mundane. It was that Emma Carstairs body was burned in the glass city with her only child standing vigil, while her killer was pardoned and returned home without reproach for his role in the rebellion against the Clave and the now Seelie King. But today when Julian Carstairs was robbed of his only comfort in the hunt and kill, by the same man who turned his life upside down. Julian swore it was the last time he would allow New York werewolf packs, Lightwoods and their vampire husbands, and the Herondale and Morgenstern freaks wrath stop him from avenging his mother.

Anyone who saw the two individuals could feel the flashpoint in the air. Death was only seconds away and each man knew it. Old family names residing like brothers, side by side in crypts of the Bone City, filled with great deeds and heroism over centuries, now reduced to bitter rivals fighting a duel in the middle of a downworld barroom.

It was the man who was born with a book in his hand, a man who they taught how to outsmart shadow hunter patrols in the wilderness of Brocelind Forest, who taught the man how to fight the deadliest of the Usurper's Fae Knights in the condensed woods of Central Park, and whose collected knowledge made it possible to hold off the full weight of the Clave and Usurper's army for two weeks in a last stand at the very gates of the Seelie Court. It was all of these adventures and sorrows that had taught him that the key wasn't to watch the shadow hunter's hand, but the shrinking of the irises.

By the time Julian Carstairs hand was on his mother's fire and wind wheels, the mundane had pivoted out of his seat. His hand was like lightning when he drew Henry Branwell's deadliest creation from its leather holster branded with twin fairy wings. The long barreled revolver spit lead and fire with a thunderous crack that startled onlooker and opponent alike.

The last of the long storied Carstairs family only had enough life in him to look down to find a hole in his padded vest and see where the bullet had pierced his heart. He called out in fear to the angel faced woman he came to his grave for. The young shadow hunter hit the floor with a mighty thump; his body was engulfed with a cloud of dust as drinks and chairs were overturned in the impact.

For a long moment the dark haired youth stood with his ancestor's smoking gun, watching the light leave his would-be killer's eyes. There was no satisfaction or smugness as he blew away the smoke from the barrel and placed it back in the holster.

No one knew where he came from, and no one saw him come in. But they'd never forget the night a .44 revolver, powered by ward magic, made the difference between the blood of an angel and the mundane they begrudgingly protected. Most of all, they'd never forget the sorrow in his eyes as he paid for both drinks before he stepped over the body and into the night, leaving one more secret to be buried in the forgotten tombs that made up the foundations of Hell's Kitchen.

* * *

**Years Ago**

_Jason Garroway was supposed to be asleep. He knew that, and his parents knew that. But there was something in the air that the boy couldn't quite put into words. A restlessness that came from a charge in the back of the five year old boy's little mind. When you're young it was hard to put into words the feelings that one gets. It was a constant problem for young Jason who was quite perceptive and one might say had a small gut with a killer instinct much in the line with all decedents of Charlotte Branwell. It had been said by a warlock with good authority on the matter that the boy was in fact the most like Charlotte than just about anyone he's met with her blood. Yet, for all his natural abilities he lacked an advanced vocabulary. Thus it was hard to make people understand his anxiety, especially tonight._

_His parents on the other hand weren't as believing in a small child's six sense as maybe they should've been. But no one would blame them if they didn't listen to Jason, and maybe he wouldn't blame them either. There could be so many other reasons that the little Garroway could be evading the sandman. They had already raised one child together, a beautiful little girl who had been quite adept at coming up with reasons to stay up past her bed time in her day. So Jason's chances of making the two of them understand why he was up was very limited._

_But right now he wasn't exactly focused on his uneasy feelings. Since waking up in his new room to the stillness of the night, he had found his only comfort from his anxious dreams in the light of his big sister's present to him. No one had expected much of it, and their mother wasn't too keen on Clary giving it to him. But in the spirit of her wedding and moving out of her childhood home to be with her husband to try a life in Idris. Clary thought it would be a nice gesture to give the young boy her old Stele to remember her by when he missed her. In truth their mother hadn't made a big fuss about it, he was different than his sister and mother; even his father and would gain little from it. But even then he had always admired her ability to make it glow and draw moving pictures to cheer him up when he was sad. Their mother's only original discouragement was telling her only daughter that it wouldn't be fair to let him get his hopes up of being able to do the same with it._

_She had found much more reservations when he took it for the first time and drew a star playfully in front of her. He remembered the wonder and awe of the illuminated shape that shadowed his mother's shocked and fear stricken face. She had scared him, much to his father's pointing out when she took her old Stele from him. Jason had cried after she refused to let him have it, and his father had taken to her reaction with anger. In the middle of that very night his mother had woken Jason, while his father was at a "Pack Meeting" at the old Police Station. She had picked some clothing for him to wear and they took a ride to Magnus Bane's. He remembered sitting with his husband Alec and falling asleep in his lap as he heard his mother beg and Magnus continue to refuse whatever it was she was asking of him. When he woke up, it was in his mother and father's bed, and to the sound of yelling. He had never seen his father so mad and his mother looked relieved despite his ravings._

_"How dare you do that to him!" _

_"I didn't do anything, there's nothing wrong. Magnus … he doesn't know why he can use it. He says it has something to do with me …" _

_"It doesn't matter, Jocelyn … After what you did to Clary!" _

_"What I did? I protected her, and I'd do the same for our child!" _

_"By denying him what he is!" _

_"He's not a Shadow Hunter, Lucian, and he's not a Werewolf. He's perfect." _

_"He'd be perfect even if wasn't a normal human."_

_"I know that! But … I can't do it. I can't watch what happened to Clary and … and what happened to … Jonathan. I won't let it happen to one more of my children. I won't let anything happen to my baby! It's bad enough that he can see the Shadow World, with this "Magic Eye" Tessa gave him … but if there's something I'm doing to help ..." _

_"Jocelyn … you know perfectly well why he can use your Stele. It isn't because he's a Fairchild, or what Tessa did, and it isn't because of me. It's because it was made for you, and a part of you is inside Jason. It recognizes him, who he is and what he means to you. Just like Clary, it will lend its power to protect him as long as he has it. It's not about what's in his blood, it's about what is in your heart."_

_In light of his father's clairvoyance his mother let Jason keep her Stele. However he was warned very sternly and commanded over and over again when ever his mother caught him playing with it to never let the tip touch his skin or there would be severe consequences for disobedience. But even then, since remembering his father's words that morning, there was always something comforting in the feeling of the Stele's cold metal in his hand when he was scared or unsure._

_With the covers pulled over him to trap the light, Jason swished the crystal tool across his vision. Drawing shapes and strange symbols he'd seen his sister, aunts, and uncles draw. Well … try to draw at any point as the symbol he was making looked more like a stick figure than actually what was on his Aunt Izzy's lower back. Yet, for all the comfort from the light and sentiments that came with it, he still couldn't find it in him to get over what was keeping him from slipping into unconsciousness. The foreboding in the silence of the empty streets, or the moonless darkness outside of his window, it all kept him from drifting off._

_Tossing the covers, he stuffed the instrument in his night pants pocket. Quietly, little sock clad feet shuffled over the floor of his sister's old room. He quietly opened the door and peeked out into the apartment. The upper floor of the otherwise deserted two floor brownstone in Brooklyn was painted a pure white that was muted in the dimmed shadows of the obscured lighting of the living area. There were large leafy green plants placed all over the apartment and paintings on the wall of Landscapes. They were of scenery that ranged from the glass spires of a secret city that Jason would never be allowed to see, to an Old Dutch farm house just outside Terry Town. The boy spent his summers there and probably liked better than some stupid glass city anyway._

_He was after a bottle of water in the fridge, and the success of the mission was fifty, fifty at best. Though the kitchen was just across the way, the journey was froth with peril. If he was too loud he would attract the attention of his mother who could always be found curled up reading a book on the sofa or painting by the window. But most of the time, it was his father that would catch him. Though he'd never admit it, Jason was sure his father could smell him the moment he stepped out of Clary's room. If caught, the chastisement, mostly from his mother, could be severe. His Uncle Simon had a point about the woman being the tightest clenched bohemian he'd ever met._

_Big blue green eyes narrowed suspiciously as they peeked from the doorway toward the living room. He could hear smacking noises and a muffled female giggle, but couldn't actually see anyone. Had the small boy been smart he might have taken this distraction as the perfect chance to get his water bottle and scrabble back to Clary's room unseen. But he was hearing strange noises that he had never heard before and seemingly no one was making them. The unsure feelings of the night's atmosphere and his own private curiosity pulled him toward the living room. But he nearly jumped out his skin, when he walked into the clearing past the kitchen wall and forgot the futon near a collection of his mother's paintings. He saw his father stretched out on top of it._

_Luke Garroway was a ruggedly handsome man, tall and slim with a scruffy beard and thick jet black curls marred with a streak of white. He wore a plaid button down that was open and old jeans that were held up with a belt that had been undone. Lying on top of him was an exquisitely beautiful svelte woman with regal features and long auburn hair spilling out of a messy bun. Her skin was milk white that was offset by the much more tanned complexion of her husband and not helped by the sleek ivory satin underwear she wore. Jocelyn Fairchild Garroway was mostly naked as she trailed her slender hand over a patch of hair on Luke's chest, her other rubbing his ear seductively._

_"Come on …" She baited in a low husky voice. "Just once." She shifted a playful jaw and raised her expressive eyebrows suggestively._

_There was a blush that crept over the book store owners face as he chuckled shyly. "Come on Jocelyn." He refused. His big hands reached down and squeezed her satiny rear with a playful reproach._

_"I just want to see them …" She bit her lip to stifle a moan at the feelings of his strong hands firmly clamped on her cheeks. "For old time's sake." She pushed her request. To make her point, she took her other hand and together, between forefinger and thumb began rubbing Luke's ears in slow delicate circles._

_He protested with a hidden shame buried in his voice. "It's weird." He still chuckled shaking his head to get away from the sensual feeling of his wife's fingers. The smile on Jocelyn's face slowly melted away at the comment and the undertone of his voice._

_Her beautiful aristocratic face went grave. "Hey." She turned her husband's face to look at her. "I love you." She cupped his stubbled cheek. "I've loved you since we were children … you never have or have to hide anything from me." She pushed herself forward and met his lips. It was a passionate kiss, full of such unbridled love. There was a lifetime of affection that filled their lips joint meeting._

_The little boy crinkled his face in disgust at the display that was becoming more aggressive. Luke flipped Jocelyn under him and began kissing down her sleek body to her flawless belly. The woman stretched out to accept his worshipped kisses that came from years of longing to do just what he was in the middle of. Jocelyn lay back, and closed her eyes. She began moaning softly as her fingers still rubbed her husband's ears._

_Jason slipped out of the living room unseen. He wasn't sure what they were doing, but the way his mother was splayed on the futon and the look on her face was making him feel funny in an uncomfortable way. He tip toed to the equally white washed kitchen. The clean counter tops, and glass panned cabinets were familiar to him either in light or darkness. He cracked open the chrome refrigerator and pulled the Aquafina out of the rack on the door. He closed it quietly and turned._

_He was confronted suddenly by two shadowed silhouettes standing side by side at the kitchen entrance. There was a frightened startle in his heart as the light switched on and for the first time the boy was visible._

_He had a thick mop of Jet black curls, marked like his father with a streak of white. He was small for his age, scrawny, but a good inherited tan. Taken together side by side Jason and his father shared coloring. But, while Clary had been universally known as her mother's daughter, the same immense, dauntless beauty of royalty, tresses of silky auburn hair and the skilled hands of an artist … in Jason there was something more primal and inherent in his likeness to Jocelyn that went beyond a shared bone structure and facial features. There was fierceness of a warrior inside him, a shared quality of spirit at first glance of both mother and child. It was said in some places of the world that the creation of a child was a union of two souls, but it was obvious that the small boy's soul was not made of a union but taken like a seed from a fruit and planted in the ground so that the exact same strong tree may sprout._

_Two sets of eyes, one blue, one a bright emerald stared in sudden surprise at the moppy haired boy in an overly big silver gray shirt with Garroway Books Inc. labeled on the front and navy blue night pants. It took a moment to process the presences of one another, seeing as a pair of wolf ears were poking out from Luke's black curls and Jocelyn was only in lingerie armed with an angel glass blade._

_"Ohmygod!" The woman gasped in a polished Idris accent. Jocelyn dropped the Seraph Blade with a clatter and jumped behind her husband at the sight of her young child staring in puzzlement at her sexy appearance. Luke barely had time to respond to her scolded cat reaction, before she nearly tore off his plaid shirt to cover herself with._

_A now shirtless Luke stepped back to cover his wife's nakedness in front of their child. "Where did you come from?" The boy's father asked him. His tone was more embarrassed surprise, than anger or chastisement. But the five year old who was very confused at everything as it was, took Luke's question a little too literary._

_Giving it a moment of serious pondering, Jason's face suddenly became screwed up. "I Dunno …" He frowned in a deeply suspicious realization. "No one ever tells me." He looked back up at his parents with the sudden revelation. "Uncle Simon says that it has something to do with a stork, but Aunt Izzy said she didn't get that "mundy" reference. Uncle Jace says that it's between momma's legs and that I could "take that one to the bank"" He was suddenly lost down the rabbit trail of the mystery of his own genesis._

_"Clary's friends are not your aunts and uncles …" Jocelyn interrupted her child. "They're barely his peers." She muttered in Luke's fuzzy ears in light of the direction their son's story seemed to be going._

_It seemed that in Jason's haze of trying to piece it all together he seemed to have ignored Jocelyn. "Clary punched him in the back of the head and told everyone that they weren't supposed to talk about … S-E-X in front of me." He looked very confused over it all. "I don't know what that means, but I think it's an Animal Gram."_

_"Anagram?"_

_"Ama … Amagram?"_

_"Anagram."_

_"Anna Grams?"_

_"Close enough."_

_Luke was grinning with an unconditional love at his boy as Jocelyn reemerged. The auburn haired beauty had wrapped the button down around her and tied the sleeves to the back. The results of her quick thinking had constructed a make shift dress. "I don't think we should leave him alone with Clary and the brain trust anymore." Luke chuckled to his wife._

_Jocelyn scoffed at his suggestion. "As opposed to what? Leaving him the capable hands of Magnus?" she pointed out. "You remember the last time we left Jason alone with him? He used our baby as a bet in a magical poker game and lost him to Tessa Gray's royal flush. She liked him so much, she wanted to keep him and we had to pay her just to get him back." There was fierce bitterness in her voice._

_"Is a royal flush, like … a toilet in a castle?" The boy asked. He was suddenly afraid there was a time in life when a woman named Tessa Gray was going to flush him down a palace potty if his parents didn't give her money._

_Luke laughed and Jocelyn looked grudgingly affectionate of the boy. "No …" Luke walked up and ruffled the boy's hair. "It's how you win in poker." He turned back and shared a look with Jocelyn. It was a proud look, a happy look. It was a look that was shared in a mutual moment when they realized that they had made a life together, a life born out of a near lifetime of devotion, friendship, and true love. After all the years of sacrifice and unrequited feelings, of demons and betrayals … this was their reward. He was their happy ending._

_For all the things Jason Garroway could say about the years to come, it was that he was a loved child._

_There were three knocks on the apartment door that startled everyone. They weren't heavy aggressive knocks, or even loud knocks. The raps at the door were civil, and polite for the hour in which the caller had come. Jocelyn and Luke frowned then looked to the door._

_They both looked from one another. Luke was shirtless, and Jocelyn was wearing a dress made from his missing article of clothing. With a long sigh the woman relented and motioned her head to Clary's room as she padded gracefully to the door._

_"Alright, lad … time for bed." Out of more habit than need, Luke Garroway hoisted the boy into his arms. Jason was always surprised that no matter how skinny his father looked, the man felt like he was made from solid muscle. The boy wrapped his arms around his father's neck and rested his cheek on his shoulder as Luke began to shuffle back into Clary's room._

_It was an odd feeling to see the hairs on the back of someone's neck stand up. The boy's tummy turned at the same time. His father stopped in the room's doorway. Jason would never forget the sight of Jocelyn opening the door without looking and come face to face with a tall hooded man clothed in black with white upside down ruins marked on a warlock's robe. A tuff of platinum blond hair found its way from under his hood. His face was shadowed but for white teeth of a sinister smile and coal eyes._

_"You look purely angelic tonight, mother."_


End file.
